One of the principal factors in the farmer's relative indifference to
health measures is the fact that he has become accustomed to think that
an outdoor life and isolation from other people give him an ability to
withstand sickness and he has rather gloried in his ability to throw off
ordinary ailments and to withstand the physical hardship which his work
often demands. He can see how health conditions may need attention in
the city where people are crowded together, but he is not impressed that
other causes make such diseases as typhoid and malaria much more
prevalent in the open country, and that bad sanitation on a farm a mile
away may cause sickness in his own family. American farmers have been
educated on the nature and spread of disease by their experience with
animal diseases, such as bovine tuberculosis, hog cholera, and Texas
fever. If they can be interested to utilize this knowledge in the care
of the health of their own families, and if they will provide health
facilities for their own families equal to those which they feel
necessary for their livestock, health conditions on the farm will show
rapid improvement. It is not that the farmer is indifferent to the
health of his family, but he has been _forced_ to have his herd tested
for tuberculosis, and he faces the possibility of heavy losses if he
does not have his hogs vaccinated for cholera, while he has not
appreciated that by preventative agencies the better health of his wife
and children may be insured and the cost of remedial treatment be
greatly lessened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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